


baby, you're my picket fence

by rowdyhomo



Category: Ao no Exorcist | Blue Exorcist
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Izumo and Rin are Terrible Delinquents, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Underage Drinking, republished, semi short chapters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-03-05 23:30:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13398573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowdyhomo/pseuds/rowdyhomo
Summary: izumo’s heart has no room for soul mates.(3/29/18. discontinued. slated for a rewrite and republishing.)





	1. izumo on soulmates

**Author's Note:**

> uuuh so this has been languishing on my hard drive for a damn long while so i'm posting what i have.

Izumo’s heart has no room for soul mates.

This, she decides the moment her mother throws her away like unwanted trash, spitting venomous words meant to kill. They fester and boil beneath Izumo’s skin if she so much as _thinks--_ but, Izumo is a survivor. She goes on. She pulls her decaying heart together. Wraps it in duty and love for her sister and ignores the edges that don’t quite fit together anymore. Then Tsukumo is gone, disappeared, and duty and love are not enough when there’s no one to prop it on. Her heart crumbles. Just like the hope shoaled carefully within her when Maria dies, tortured, before Izumo’s eyes.

Izumo goes on. She gathers from the ashes something small and barely beating. She stiches the bitter thing together with determined spite and burning hatred that seeps into her bones. Calls it a heart.

The pathetic thing barely has room for Tsukumo, for her goal, and for all the nasty, dirty secrets of the past that cling to her like pond scum.

There is no room in Izumo’s heart for soulmates.

(She cannot be broken apart into so many pieces and scattered across the winds again. Some pieces lost and never to be found. The pieces remaining so full of jagged edges that they will not fit or smooth together again but grind and tear like shrapnel in her soul.

She refuses.)

She supposes that’s why the gods deign to mark her. Why they taint the curve of her hips with two dainty, flowery marks that are bright blue and difficult to ignore at the best of times.

Her life remains consistent in its unfairness, at least.


	2. izumo on friends and paku

Izumo never had friends before the Illuminati and certainly didn’t have any after they tore through her life. Friends are a weakeness. A lie people share between themselves that can only come crumbling down because people are _weak_ and will _always_ betray you for themselves. 

Except for Paku, of course.

However, if Izumo is being honest, Paku is less of a friend and more of a pillar. A touchstone. The girl is something so much more than the flimsy word ‘friend’ implies that Izumo hesitates to name her such. Paku is the one constant in Izumo’s life. The one thing that carries over from where Izumo firmly divides her life into ‘Before’ and ‘After’. The one thing that Izumo can count on in all things.

Paku is the singular person Izumo would ever dare to bare her skin, her heart, and her soul to.

Which is why, Izumo supposes, it is so singularly disappointing when the two of them take to the public baths for the first time together and there is no matching pair of marks to be found on Paku’s hips.

There is, in fact, not a single mark to be found anywhere on Paku’s skin.

Izumo doesn’t know whether this makes her feel better or worse.

Feeling a prickling along her neck, Izumo finally tears her gaze away from burning a hole in Paku’s skin to find the brunette watching her. Izumo glances away, flushing, her arms jerking in a half-aborted motion to cover her own marks.

Paku only smiles, hands folding in her lap as she says, “It’s okay, Izumo, you can ask.”

Izumo’s eyes flick back to her before rapidly darting across the blank canvas of Paku’s skin. There are some parts of Paku that Izumo can’t see. It’s possible the dreaded soul mark lays somewhere where she can’t observe.

Somehow, Izumo doubts it.

“D’you…,” Izumo stops, parsing what exactly she wants to ask as she looks away once more. Her arms wrap around herself, hands resting as inconspicuously as she can manage across her own marks. “Have you ever had one?”

“Nope!” Paku chirps cheerfully.

It’s strangely joyful, Izumo feels, for such a…not taboo but certainly unusual condition. Her friend’s glibness about it allows her to uncoil, however. If it didn’t bother Paku then Izumo wouldn’t let it bother her, either.

Paku adds nothing, after that, turning back to the faucet to finish washing herself. Izumo watches her. Waits.

Paku finishes washing.

Izumo fidgets in place.

Paku begins wrapping up herself up in a towel.

Izumo holds her breath.

Paku finally turns to her, hands on her hips, and Izumo braces herself.

There’s nothing but a long moment of silence in which Izumo’s muscles coil tighter and tighter until finally Paku breaks it.

“Hurry up, Izumo! I wanna soak until I return my ancestral prune roots,” Paku says, grinning.

The statement is startlingly ridiculous enough that Izumo misplaces her brain to mouth filter, unsticks her tongue from the roof of her mouth, and blurts, “What, not gonna ask?”

Her tone is waspish. Biting, defensive, and so far from anything that Izumo ever wants to use on the most precious person precious in her life. Izumo winces. She jerks her gaze away from Paku. Shame of two kinds washes through her to flood her face with bright red. Embarrassment from snapping at Paku and the deep buried, visceral sort that comes from years of denial. Of cursing marks that make her someone else’s, of hating something out of her hands when all she’s ever wanted is control. Of knowing she’s not good enough, not worthy enough, for a soulmate anyway. Of batting questions away with scorn and being met with the same in turn.

(Have you met them? _No._ What are they like? _Don’t know, don’t care_. Has your mark ever glowed? _No._ Sometimes if it feels hot around a person that might be them. I hear if you meditate you can hear their voice! _So?_ Why don’t you care? _Because_. Don’t you want to know? _No_. There’s someone _made_ for you. _I don’t care. I don’t want them ~~they won’t want me~~ I don’t care I don’t care I don’tIdon’tIdon’t_ )

“Nope,” declares Paku, her voice cutting across Izumo’s spiraling thoughts.

The red-eyed girl blinks, shocked out of her defensiveness straight into incredulity. She splutters, “N— _no_?”

“Nope!” A wide, mischievous grin.

“Not…not even t’ lecture me?” asks Izumo, just to be sure.

Paku smile becomes something small, soft with understanding. It’s almost painful to look at because it’s everything Izumo’s has never deserved.

“Izumo, I can tell it makes you uncomfortable. I’m not going to ask you about it unless you tell me to,” Paku explains gently.

Izumo gives Paku one long, assessing stare before huffing dismissively, “Well, don’ hold your breath.”

Paku laughs as she moves by Izumo, making her way out of the washing area.

“Alright, I won’t. Meet you in the bath, ok?”

Izumo hums before furiously dumping a bucket of water over her head. Arguably, to wet her hair once more so she can finish cleaning it. If it also disguises the flush in her cheeks and drowns out the fluttering of her heart—well. No one else had to know.


	3. izumo on sticking to your own business

It seems to be no time at all before Izumo’s fifteenth birthday comes and goes, unremarked upon except for Paku _accidentally_ bringing too much of what just _happens_ to be Izumo’s favorite dessert for lunch. Izumo allows Paku to rope her into sharing so it wouldn’t go to waste without much fuss. Such a thing seems so inconsequential to Izumo’s usual wishes of leaving the day unacknowledged when it makes Paku happy.

Even it only serves to remind Izumo of all she’ll have to eventually leave. For Exorcist Cram School also starts on the heels of the two of them growing older, bringing Izumo all that much closer to completing her goals, and closer to the Illuminati coming to collect her. That’s not even touching on the annoyance that is the other exorcist students. Half of them spouting the ridiculous fib that they’re going to _defeat Satan_ and the other half so sickeningly friendly—especially that audacious Moriyama girl—that it’s a wonder Izumo doesn’t vomit from their idiocy on the spot.

Truly, Paku is the one bright spot in anything that Izumo has. Which stands to reason why it’s so suddenly ripped out from under her.

“I’m going to quit cram school. I don’t really get the material and…”

Izumo knows that. She’s been coaching Paku through to passing grades in all their subjects, after all. Izumo doesn’t care that Paku didn’t get it. It doesn’t matter to her. Izumo has said she will take care of Paku and Paku is the only thing she even _has_ so what is Izumo supposed to do without her? She can protect her. She _can_.

“And another thing, I don’t like making fun of earnest people.”

This is about the _Moriyama_ girl? That idiot practically asks Izumo to take advantage of her. It isn’t Izumo’s fault if she doesn’t take the hint and wise up. Perhaps, she has gone too far by making the girl wait outside the bathroom? But Paku knew why Izumo can’t stand for people seeing her naked.

“I’m sorry. I meant to say something earlier and a true friend would have but...,” Paku shrugs, sheepish.

Izumo rather wants to die.

‘A true friend would have’…are they not? Did…is Paku _leaving_ her?

Izumo’s mind whirls around on pleas, apologies, _anything_ to make Paku _stay._ Her mouth works furiously with her thoughts, but nothing comes out. The words stick in her throat. All caught up in the paralyzing fear of being alone and the gnawing certainty that she deserves nothing less. The purple-haired girl gathers herself, bracing, and pushes through to—and then poison miasma drips down onto Paku.

Izumo has no time to catch her equilibrium. The world races and slows in intervals like a rubber band stretching then snapping. The ghoul. Her familiars, _brothers_ , turning on her. Rin charging forward. Moriyama saving Paku. Izumo fleeing.

In the end, Shiemi doesn’t quite see Izumo naked and certainly never sees her soul marks. By the time Shiemi has rushed in after Rin, Izumo’s arms are firmly about her own waist, covering them until she flees behind the lockers. Rin sees. Twice. Once when he saves her from her own summons and once when he gives her his shirt to cover up. Izumo spends the night doing laundry. Alternatively grinding her teeth and biting the backs of her hands because someone has _seen_.

Rin doesn’t bring them up. Not even when she hands him his freshly cleaned shirt does he take the opportunity to remark upon it. He merely takes his shirt back with a baffled look.

Izumo finds herself both relieved and strangely furious. If she went through all the trouble of feeling anxious over it, he may as well prove her fears founded. But, Rin doesn’t and Izumo isn’t sure what to do about it.

Her lips thin as she eyes him in the corner of her vision, trying to gauge his thoughts.

“Listen, don’t tell anyone you saw me cryin’ yesterday, got it?” she demands.

Rin blinks rapidly at her, possibly in confusion, before shrugging nonchalantly, “Yea, sure, whatever.”

Fury wins out over relief as Izumo snaps, “I mean it!”

Rin flinches harshly, in a way that sends an uncomfortable curl of guilt in her gut, spluttering as he holds up the folded shirt like a shield between them, “Alright! Okay! Don’ tell anyone! Got it!”

Rin’s expression goes funny then. Izumo sees him sniff the shirt. A gleeful grin breaks out across his face.

“Wow! You washed it! You’re act’ally really nice, huh?” he exclaims. 

 “What? No way! I only washed it ‘cause it was _smelly_ ,” denies Izumo, sticking her nose in the air imperiously.

Rin, predictably, squawks and flails about.

Izumo lets the knot of tension within her unravel. If Rin doesn’t plan on bringing up hers then Izumo won’t bring up his, either. The mark which arcs from his sternum across his ribs, to flare widely across his back, colored the silvery white of scar tissue. The color of a broken bond. Of death.

Izumo learns much, much later sometime in the Kyoto mission, by accident more than anything, that Konekomaru has the same mark. Izumo watches Suguro and Shima watch Konekomaru, who does nothing, and keeps her mouth shut.

It all works out, anyway, and the next Izumo sees their marks while the group is on the Kraken mission they’re colored with a vibrant orange.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is my last prewritten chapter (well it isn't but there's some in between stuff i have to write first) so updating will not happen for a bit.


	4. izumo on shiemi

Izumo has never once been nice to the Moriyama girl. She may not have been _mean_ but she certainly isn’t ever nice. For a while there it had even been mean, Izumo using Shiemi for the naïve fool she is.

Yet, Shiemi continues to be nice to Izumo. Friendly, even.

Izumo would almost call her stupid except she knows the girl isn’t. Even if Shiemi does make up ridiculous names for plants and herbs that make Izumo want to bang her head against the nearest solid surface.

Hasn’t she _learned_? Izumo doesn’t make friends, doesn’t do friendly, and doesn’t like her _at all_ so why does she keep hanging around and talking to Izumo like Shiemi might just actually _care_ about her?

Because she doesn’t. Izumo _knows_ she doesn’t.

(If her mother can’t care about her, then who can?)

Izumo isn’t mean but she’s cold. Distant and uninterested whenever Shiemi tries to interact with her. Quick to snapping when the other girl so much as breathes. Unbothered, Shiemi smiles and tries again. And again. Again. Izumo finds herself doing trivial things just to get her to _stop_ for a while. Things like explaining a certain part of lecture that Shiemi hadn’t understood properly (what her fellow exorcists don’t know can get them all killed so this is a benefit for Izumo, as well) and taste-testing her horrible herb cookies (if her mother taught her anything, it’s that refusing offered food is beyond rude).

Every time Izumo does anything at all, Shiemi lights up like a Christmas tree, thanks Izumo profusely while smiling that smile that crinkles her eyes, bares her teeth, and leaves her cheeks a little red. It’s a nice smile. A smile that does funny, fluttery things to Izumo’s insides. It also makes Izumo feel like dirt and her stomach clench. So, she scowls to keep herself from smiling back, scrunching her nose and brows. If anything, Shiemi’s smiles seem to widen whenever Izumo does so.

It makes Izumo distinctly uncomfortable.

But, then again, most things about Shiemi cause Izumo discomfort. Her earnestness, her trusting nature, her friendliness. Her whole existence is one big, bright discomfort to Izumo, like a sun that shines constantly on Izumo no matter where she turns.

The worst part is Shiemi’s absolute shamelessness when it comes to exposing her heart to the world. Her fears, her bliss, her triumphs, every little thing, Shiemi bares it to the world fearlessly.

Like now, as the blonde begins—not confesses like Izumo might—just _says_ , “I-I want to help people…but I just get in the way.”

Shiemi’s breath hitches and her hands clench together tightly. However, she doesn’t clam up, doesn’t drop it there and save her dignity. She only continues in that same shaky yet determined voice that drives Izumo spare.

“If this keeps up, when my friends are really in trouble, I won’t…I won’t be any h-help at all! I-I’m no use!” Shiemi sobs.

Izumo fails not to wince as the familiar chord struck in her _aches_ right down to her bones.

“Th-that’s why Yuki and R-rin…didn’t talk to m-me about the situation they were in!”

Then, with absolutely no shame at all, Shiemi wails as she falls to her knees, “I j-just want to b-be strong!”

It’s positively _disgusting_ and sets something close to rage burning in Izumo’s core. This girl who bares her heart to the world with no care, who says what _ever_ damn thing comes to her head, who laughs and cries and _feels_ without abandon wants to be _strong_?

Izumo inhales, the breath hissing shakily passed clenched teeth, and forces a slow exhale. On her next inhale, she spits with near fury, “You…you absolutely blow my mind, y’know that?”

Shiemi’s sobs choke off, though the tears continue to fall, as she glances up at Izumo with startled, shining eyes.

“You’re plenty strong! Absolutely gutsy!” Izumo shouts. Her voice is high and her clenched hands at her side.

“I-I am…?” whimpers Shiemi, voice startlingly small.

It’s even more disgusting than the crying. It’s wrong. Moriyama should never sound small when she’s so much larger than life. A blinding, stubborn sun that won’t leave Izumo be.

Izumo nods. She wants to yell some more, the roiling emotions inside her not satisfied, but she’s already feeling drained, emptied out, exhausted. She sneers, “Tough and stubborn—like a weed.”

Not really a compliment, but no less true in Izumo’s eyes.

Shiemi, of course, loves it. She smiles that smile that simultaneously makes Izumo feel close to proud and fairly nauseous, tears still caught in her lashes and streaming down her cheeks, and declares proudly, “Thank you, Kamiki! I’ll keep fighting! Just like the weedies!”

Izumo chokes on her spit.

_Guts of steel!_


	5. izumo on the caring and feeding of delinquents

Izumo is, in truth, not entirely sure how her current situation came to be.

She hadn’t even been all that _nice_ to Rin. She had just refused to follow the party line and excommunicate Rin in Kyoto like the rest of the exwires. For entirely _petty_ and _selfish_ reasons, she might add. Rin has been an uncomfortably stuck burr in her fur ever since. One that Izumo has been strangely uncomfortable removing from her life. Hence, her confusion now.

That’s Rin for you, though, she guesses. A little worm that just eats his way into your heart and sits there like he belongs and just drags you into whatever cockamamie thing he’s cooked up. _Literally,_ cooked up, sometimes. Doesn’t even _ask_ if you want to. Except, he does, but in a way that makes Izumo feel akin to a puppy kicker if she says no. Damn annoying, is what it is.

(She, maybe, just possibly, doesn’t mind all that much. Rin can be fun, and it is sort of…nice…to have someone to be delinquent with every now and then. It’s significantly less nice to tutor the poor bastard, though.)

Izumo sighs with a great melancholy before chugging back the shit-cheap beer Rin had brought them. She empties it in one go then tosses it to Rin to watch with fascination as he crushes it with a single bare hand. She needs at least two hands to do that.

“’s sucks,” she tells him plainly before grabbing another.

Rin squints at her for a distressingly long time before finally answering, “Well, sorry pri’cess. You brin’ next time.”

Izumo rolls her eyes, comfortably warm enough that flinging back a scathing retort doesn’t even cross her mind. The half-demon beside her lists to the side, jerks himself straight, then lists the other way. It’s almost pathetic considering he’s on his second drink to her five and this really _is_ piss poor beer.

“Yer already tipsy,” she sniggers, for the lack of anything else in her pleasantly blank mind.

Rin frowns at her.

“’M _not_.”

“Uh, _yeah_.”

To prove her eloquently argued point, Izumo pokes him in the shoulder.

Rin leans to the side.

“Tip—”

Rin continues to lean until he’s sprawled across the ground, giggling.

“—See?”

With all the grace of one attempting to catch a soap bar in the shower, Rin flips her off.

Izumo laughs. The sharp, hyena like kind that leaves her wheezing and startles Rin into laughter. Which makes Izumo laugh _more_. They build on each other, laughing for no reason, until Izumo is sprawled next to Rin in the grass. The two of them clutching their stomachs and gasping for air.

Eventually they settle into companionable mostly-silence, the occasional giggle frothing up from the depths of their sloshed brains.

Izumo begins to ponder what the exact mechanics of shooting stars are, because there’s a _lot_ tonight and all of them are going in _circles_ , when Rin babbles something unintelligible. It takes a moment for the girl to even register something being said. Then several more to decide that while Rin is meaning to say something he most certainly isn’t.

“Wassat?” Izumo prompts upon realizing nothing more is forthcoming.

Rin, huffs, rolling over to face her. Izumo obliges by doing the same.

“I said,” begins Rin slowly. Carefully picking his way through his words like he’s a mouse in a room of hungry cats. “Whatcha think ‘bout soul squiggies—marks? Wha’e’er. Y’know, the things.”

Izumo freezes, whatever lingering giddiness rapidly fading. A hand rises to her mouth, where she worries the skin on the back of it between her teeth. Rin’s mouth pulls down disapprovingly at the corners. He slaps at her hand. Misses. Izumo continues to gnaw even as Rin waggles his hands uselessly in her direction. Only when Izumo feels that the bubbling vitriol awakened at Rin’s question has returned safely to her belly does she acquiesce to the boy’s wordless demands.

Making a pleased noise, Rin grasps the both of her hands, rubbing thumbs over the backs of them soothingly. He smiles in that goofy, dopey manner of his until Izumo finally sucks in a breath to speak.

“Why.”

Rin’s smile disappears almost as quickly as Izumo’s had. It makes Izumo feel unfathomably guilty which isn’t damn fair considering _he_ started it.

Then Rin starts _sobbing_.

Panic that has nothing to do with the blue flames Rin is sprouting, shoots through Izumo like a live-wire, flipping every fight-or-flight instinct in her to _fight_.

“Wha, Rin wha’s _wrong_?” _Who hurt you? I’ll_ kill _them_.

Rin stutters between great, big aching sobs, spinning a story that Izumo’s drunken brain can barely pick out. He talks about how his mark had discolored when he’d first drawn his sword. How he’d thought that since he’d become—been? —Satan’s son he could no longer have a soulmate. How he’d had become unlovable. Unworthy. It strikes an agonizingly familiar note within Izumo.

Out of the need for Rin to _stop talking_ than any real desire to deal with _emotions_ , Izumo pulls Rin into an uncoordinated hug. She pats him gently on the back, wary of causing vomiting, and murmurs something that might be soothing. Izumo isn’t sure. Words just seem to be falling out of her mouth at this point.

Rin cries _harder_.

Izumo feels for him, she does, but she came here to be a delinquent drunk not share life stories or play at amateur therapy.

It takes several minutes of Izumo determinedly cooing nonsense platitudes to get Rin to stop crying. It takes several more of her not-so-inconspicuously attempting to smother the small blue flames all over Rin’s form for him to stop resembling a half-demon torch. She then decides enough is enough and hefts the boy onto her shoulder in a fireman’s carry. By then, he’s a half asleep dead weight that won’t stop talking about just how much he loves his boyfriend.

Izumo feels distinctly uncomfortable.

Nonetheless, the girl generously hides the evidence of their delinquency by kicking the cans under a nearby bush. Izumo then hauls off across True Cross campus to where she’s positive Konekomaru’s dorm must be.

Fairly positive.

They do make it there. Eventually.

Once they do, Izumo graciously doesn’t ring the doorbell. Instead, she kicks at the door until a frazzled looking Konekomaru answers. Without ceremony, Izumo dumps Rin into Konekomaru’s arms. The shorter boy only just manages not to topple to the floor while accepting Rin’s drunken, soppy, _loud_ , declarations of affection with a bemused, gentle grace.

Something twinges in Izumo’s chest as she watches them. It must show on her face because Konekomaru asks, above Rin’s chatter, “Is something wrong, Kamiki?”

Izumo blinks, contemplating far longer than the question likely deserves. The alcohol’s doing, surely. She licks her lips.

“Nada one.”

The syllables pop with exaggerated certainty for all that it tastes like a lie in her mouth. They shouldn’t but they do. It’s unsettling. Strange.

Izumo leaves before Konekomaru can question her further. She tells herself she’s making a strategic retreat to avoid incrimination instead of running from feelings. She almost believes it.

Somewhere between stumbling from the boys’ dorm and into her own room, Izumo realizes just what the twisting, wrenching emptiness in her chest is. It’s longing—want. She wants what Konekomaru and Rin have, the closeness, the ease, the affection. She wants it so much she’s sick with it. Even as her stomach twists and her mind rebels because she can’t. She can’t have that. She can _never_ have that. She would never take the chance of risking her goals and her sister. She can’t even stomach the thought of putting her well-being in someone else’s hands let alone the idea of giving someone _everything_ and risking the remains of her barely beating heart.

But gods, does she _want_ it.

Someone to hold and love, that will hold and love her in turn. Despite her flaws, of which there are _many_.

She thinks she could be good at it, too, if given the chance.

It’s a damn shame, then, that it simply isn’t in the cards for her, Izumo thinks, curious and sad.

Izumo finally stumbles into her own dorm, into Paku’s patient arms, and pretends she isn’t crying as the other girl puts her to bed.


	6. izumo on cutting your losses

In the morning, she brushes off the revelation as alcohol induced, and therefore invalid. She will admit the emotional fit is useful in pointing out all the soft spots that had grown in her since joining the exorcist cram school, if nothing else. She spends a week excising them, sharpening her dulled tongue into a scalpel, and severing the fine spiderweb-like linkages that have grown between herself and her fellow exwires. She had grown lax, recently, lulled into complacency by her friendship with Paku.

There’s a hollowness in her, afterwards. An emptiness like a phantom limb that follows her for days on end. She ignores it. How she feels is unimportant, only her strength and her goals matter.

It’s not like she can count on the other exwires. Not when it counts.

It’s not like they _care_ about her.

(She doesn’t think about Rin saving her from her own brothers or the ghoul. Rin rushing off again and again to keep them safe. Rin’s face when she sits by him on the train and beams at her like her words are the world when they’re hardly anything at all.

_‘Thank you, Izumo.’_

She doesn’t think of Shiemi saving Paku. Shiemi saving Izumo from the miasma despite the blonde’s waning strength and danger to her own life. Shiemi trying again and again and again to be Izumo’s friend.

_‘Even if you hate me, I still like you a lot!’_

She doesn’t think of how angry she gets when they’re reckless and foolish. She doesn’t think of their smiles and determination. Doesn’t think of how, inexorably, they drew her in kicking and screaming and how she doesn’t want to leave—)

Because they don’t care about her. It’s all false, pretty words that won’t mean a thing when it really comes down to it. She doesn’t blame the exwires for saying them, even if it’s annoying, because they undoubtfully believed that they meant what they said. That’s just how people are.

Still, it doesn’t make cutting them out any easier. They just keep trying and trying and trying until Izumo feels full to bursting with impotent rage. Until she just wants to _scream_ at them to leave her alone, to stop pretending, stop lying to her face when she knows the truth: that you could only rely on yourself and trust in yourself. It’s the only way to survive, after all.

And yet, some small, soft part of Izumo still _listens_. Listens to their words and promises and _hopes_ —right up until Shima literally stabs her in the back.

Izumo tells herself it doesn’t hurt.

(She just might believe it. Eventually.)

When she wakes to her worst nightmares—captured by the Illuminati, at the mercy of Gedouin and his horrifying experiments—Izumo refuses to grieve the loss of trust. Doesn’t acknowledge the hurt coursing through her. Instead, she wraps herself in righteous rage and smothers the cold embers of fear in her belly. She grits her teeth and plans.

No one is coming to save her, no matter what Mike and Uke tell her later. She can rely only herself. Trust in only herself. She had forgotten, for a moment there, but life has dutifully reminded her. She won’t forget again.

She can’t afford to.


	7. Update Notice

Hey, I'm marking this fic as complete. I'll be taking it, pumping it full of steroids, and republishing it in its full muscle bulging refurbished glory. Some parts will remain the same, in that you'll recognize passages from this fic in the coming fic but the coming fic is going to be better. A lot better. Especially since I won't write six chapters in a fit of mania and actually plot things out.

Sorry about the wait but I hope you're not too disappointed!


End file.
